Microstructural mapping of neural pathways in Alzheimer's disease using macrostructure-informed normative tractometry.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is sensitive to the microstructural properties of brain tissues and shows great promise in detecting the effects of degenerative diseases. However, many approaches analyze single measures averaged over regions of interest without considering the underlying fiber geometry.

Methods

We propose a novel macrostructure-informed normative tractometry (MINT) framework to investigate how white matter (WM) microstructure and macrostructure are jointly altered in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia. We compared MINT-derived metrics with univariate diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) metrics to examine how fiber geometry may impact the interpretation of microstructure.

Results

In two multisite cohorts from Nort

SUBMITTER: Feng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11782200 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature